Building high-end 'tables cheap at Home Despot II

Thanks for your input Francois, it's been a looooonnnggg time since I played with a Lenco tonearm, the only one I ever rewired was back in '92 when I first discovered the Idler, then found my first Mighty Lenco!! That tonearm I also modified by gluing a better headshell in the front, with epoxy-resin (I found one which fit snuggly into the drilled-out end), and via advertising at the back of British audio mags found the address of Technical & General for new armblocks. The end result was quite good as I recall.

So I guess the MAS tonearm is excellent for reasons all its own ;-). On another budget front, I just cleaned up a Sony 1130 integrated, truly a work of engineering art with matched capacitors and so forth, and it came within a hair of matching the top-of-the-line Sony 2000F preamp/TA-3140F combo which is my current reference!! Lots o fpower too for those looking for audiophile sound and Party Punch on a budget!! Weighs a ton. Have fun all, want to check out my Piezo YM-308 MKII next :-).

The MAS 282 sounds like an interesting tonearm. At first I thought John you made a typo and were referring to the ultra rare (read ultra expensive) Micro MAX 282. An arm I once had and now regret selling, it was one of the most dynamic, pure sounding arm I have ever heard and it also has a rubber decoupling to mount the counterweight on the arm tube. I always thought though that the counterweight sagged just a tad, maybe age, maybe design.

Also the Sony PUA-7 and PUA-9 have a similar design and the PUA-7 is a ridiculously good sounding arm for the money, I have not heard the PUA-9 and would be interested to know if anyone else on this thread has heard that arm. Also the Ikeda arms use a rubber (or similar compound) O-ring between counterweight and arm tubes, and probably there are other designs like this out there?

It seems that there is something then to rubber damping and decoupling designs. Almost has one wondering if there are some quick and dirty opportunities to incorporate this methodology on to other arms we like.

Steve in Ottawa

"...It seems that there is something then to rubber damping and decoupling designs. Almost has one wondering if there are some quick and dirty opportunities to incorporate this methodology on to other arms we like..."

Not hard to do, actually! A homebuilt tonearm I made many years ago, had rubber counterweight decoupling. The rear counterweight stub was a piece of 1/4 inch threaded rod, the counterweight itself was glued-together steel washers whose holes cleared the threaded rod. I glued rubber motor isolation mounts from the common Garrard record changers on the ends of the counterweight. Their center holes (sorry...Garrard was British, make that "centre" holes :-) ) just happened to "thread" onto the counterweight stub, so that the counterweight could be rotated on the threads to set it...and so the counterweight was rubber-isolated!

Even the ESL arm from early stereo days, had rubber decoupling of the counterweight.

What Steve, tupo, me ;-)?!? Actually, many of these rubber-decoupled tonearms do sag over time, but it doesn't seem to affect performance unless of course it's extreme. I too found the Sony PUA tonearms to be superb, but each one I got had a broken antiskate thread, difficult to fix in this particular tonearm, though I should get off my ass and fix it. When I first discovered just how good the Sony 2250 was, I mounted a PUA-286 to it and matched an Audio Technica OC-9 to that, and the resulting sound was stunningly pure, delicate and filigree-detailed. No rubber decoupling on these particular tonearms however. Be interesting to do some experiments as you say and see if this technique improves many tonearms. The Lenco tonearm's piano-wire goes some ways to decoupling, and so incorporates the idea if not the method (and also often sags over time). Anyway, more MAS experiments ahead, tonight the Piezo YM-308 MKII, one of the most detailed MMs I've ever heard.

A friend of mine with one of the best systems I've ever heard, though largely budget (heavily-modified legendary Superphon Revelation Dual Mono, 20-watt budget Wave 20 Antique Sound Lab monoblocks, big brothers to the legendary Wave 8s, JSE Infinite Slope Model .8 speakers, and of course Lencos), recently discovered the Greatness of vintage Sony electronics! I always thought much of his system's performance was due to the Giant Killer Superphon preamp, but when we inserted the Sony TAE-5450 preamp in his system, the performance went up a few notches, to the point where it sounded like a $10K no-holds-barred tube preamplifier. The sound was so BIG (walk-in soundstage)and pristine and smoooottthhhhh, with truly juicy and punchy bass. The TAE-5450 is a V-fet preamp, and V-fet were called the tubes of the silicon world, and in this system, rightly so. Now he has to have one.

Good to hear from you again Gene, and to the rest, have fun all, as always!!

Hello all, back with some more audio experimentation and information. First of all, I resurrected my Piezo YM-308 MKII MM, apparently a moving iron like the Grados, and was greeted with the same tremendous resolution of fine detail as always hit me with back in the days of the original thread. Truly stunning amounts of fine detail reminiscent of high-end LOMCs, but without quite the edge or speed of the best MCs. But, this is a plus in some systems, like say with my Athena Technologies SP-3s (their top-of-the-line before the Klipsch takeover), where the softer edges make the YM-308 MKII the Cartridge of the Day; while the JMW 10.5/Ortofon Jubilee comes across as grainy. This is because, like the Klipsch, the Athenas are horn-loaded (though not nearly as extreme as the Klipsches), and so benefit from MMs and tube electronics. I think I'll order the hundred-buck-tube-monoblock kits from Antique Electronic Supply to run both my Athenas and my Klipsch Heresy MKI (the ones with the metal horns). I remember a friend of mine bought these 8-watt wonders and they utterly outperformed a megabuck Class A SS amp when backing pricey Tetra loudpseakers and fronted by an upper-end Sonic Frontiers preamp, with, of course, a Lenco doing the grunt-work. Don't feel like spending lots of dough, and now that the amazing Antique Sound Lab Wave 8 8-watt monoblocks are no available, then the AES amps are it. Definitely worth the cost, absolutely incredible results provided they are matched to sympathetic speakers, which include true high-end speakers. Replace key capacitors with audiophile-grade ones to make the most of them. Fun too, being kits, AND cheap.

With my more neutral/refined Yamahas and ESS speakers, however, the Ortofon Jubilee is the Cartridge of the Day, as the Piezo's softer presentation becomes too much of a good thing in my very tubey-sounding system using the fab vintage SS Sony electronics. The Piezo doesn't have the slam and excitement of the Grado Woody, or the transient speed of the Ortofon M15E Super MKII, perhaps my overall fave vintage MM of All Time, with the warmth and magic of Grados and stunning resolution to boot, superior to that achievable by the Grados. The Sonus/Mayware tonearm matched to the Satin M-117 HOMC (with conical tip and replaceable stylus assembly as with MMs) takes the all-time Prime Position at the moment as overall the most musical, magical and detailed (and all this with a conical tip!!!), and - FINALLY - I have managed to track down another Satin M-117, this time a "Z", an extreme stylus profile. Whew, this might crush my Jubilee, we'll have to wait and see. Keep your eyes open for these Satin gems all, they do exist, though they seem to be as rare as the Piezos.

I'm going to start construction of a sand-box to place under my unsuspended idler-wheel drives and report on the results: hopefully all the speed and focus of unsuspended designs will remain, while all extraneous noise - which includes audio feedback in the lower frequencies, a real danger with unsuspended idler-wheel drives (the ONLY way to go), especially with low-mass unipivots and MMs - will be filtered out. Can't wait!!

Getting back to the Athena Technology speakers, previously known as Sound Dynamics (essentially identical designs in terms of crossovers) where their RTS-3 bookshelf model wowed Harry Pearson (a budget wonder getting rave reviews from him, a miracle!), these have the same Supreme way with PraT I remember from back in the Golden Days of my Antique Soudn Lab Wave 8/Sound Dynamic RTS-5 combo, which counts as one of the most musically-successful systems I ever owned: endless all-night listening sessions which had me dragging my exhausted feet to work. When I hooked them up to the Lenco/MAS/YM-308 MKII, the music was irresistable and melted me in my seat. All their speakers are easy to drive and major in dynamic ease and surprisingly good imaging and depth, and in unbelievable bass from small woofers and enclosures (how does he do it??). Anyway, the SP-3s - a three-way budget speaker which nevertheless was at the top of their heap - have truly incredible bass, tight, DEEP, and detailed, though the box does not weigh much, and which is not very big. This is a charactersitic of the man behind these speakers, who in wizardly fashion was incredibly adept at producing incredibly musical model after incredibly musical model, AND which produced incredible amounts of bass, detail and imaging at a low low price. Match any of his models - which all share a crossover point at precisely 2K, perhaps partly responsible for the musicality? - to tube electronics, and to an Idler-Wheel Drive and a PRaT-Supreme MM (or perhaps a Denon DL-103), and you will find yourselves glued to your respective seats night after night. Lenco/RN-250/Grado/AES tube amps/Athena Technology (or Sound Dynamics, both used) spells Incredible Musicality And Peformance at a Budget Price, or "IMAPBP" ;-). Let's hope the man behind these various musically magical and musically exciting deisgns (I used to know his name - he was a guitarist in a band and put his ear for music to excellent use) continues his career in speaker design: anything else would be a crime, ahem, Mr. Klipsch.

Anyway, time to try out the AKG P8ES (and the Super Nova version I also have) cartridge next!! Have fun all, I LOVE hooking up $100K+ worth of sonic performance (i.e. a Giant Direct Coupled Lenco belt-drive equivalent, if even this :-)) to budget components, now THIS is fun!!